A large jovial man seated next to me at the Saturday morning press screening for Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed turned to his daughter, just as the lights dimmed, and said, "Honey, you know it's costumes, right? These scary monsters, they're just old men in costume, right? That's what happened when daddy watched Scooby at your age."
What a good daddy he was.
His point was astute and important, a fundamental Law of the Scooby-Doo Universe, as set down in Day-Glo pinks and go-go boots by kitsch kings Hanna and Barbera way back at the Dawn of Modern Pop, 1969: Mystery Inc., that crime-solving gang of nerds, preeners, and canines, never face actual ghouls.
Never ever never ever.
Instead, they are bound by a historical trust: They must arrest the seemingly limitless number of cranky elderly gentlemen with an otherwise unmarketable talent for creating ghost pirate ships and abominable snow creatures out of wind machines and empty potato sacks.
At least I thought that was the idea. After spending a majority of the first film reconciling their breakup, the new movie finds Mystery Inc. basking in the glow of adoration. A new museum exhibit is opening in Coolsville displaying the monster suits of all the elderly gentlemen they've exposed over the years. Walking the red carpet at the museum gala, there's a cute bit where they meet their corresponding fan base: stoners take to Shaggy, lonely fat men to Daphne, etc.
Then their night out is interrupted - much the way the easy-going goofiness of the first film was ruined - by loud, obnoxious, depressingly ordinary special effects: a Pterodactyl and his cackling master in an outfit obviously lifted from the touring company of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. The monster suits are stolen and monsters climb into costume and go on a rampage. Floating ghost pirate ships get to cruise through Coolsville traffic.
Mystery Inc. must, in other words, save the city from $80 million worth of computer- generated imagery, all the while fending off the odd smear campaign of a local TV reporter (Alicia Silverstone) that forces the gang to question if they're really good at what they do. Echoes of Ghostbusters are felt briefly. Otherwise, I can't begin to tell you how much 7-year-olds enjoy cynical cracks about the media.
About as much as they stay up for Hannity & Colmes on Fox.
This is uncomfortable: I hate to be in the ridiculous position of defending the integrity of what was admittedly a lazy Saturday morning tradition. But real monsters, a story about confronting one's personal demons, a Scooby Doo with photo-realistic fur, a Scooby Doo story that actually tries - kids might not mind, but it smacks me as a complete betrayal of the series.
That poor, unwitting dad who assumes all Scooby monsters are still men in costume: he's with me in fondly remembering a two-dimensional cartoon world, one with cheap production values, storylines more repetitive than the Telletubbies, and characters defined by their fondness for ascots or the reird way they really, really rawk really runny.
But then we're both in denial.
Two years after the first film broke $150 million at the box office, maybe it's too late (or just too futile) to pose the obvious:
Seriously, did anyone phone Hollywood and ask that their two dimensional memories be translated into three grotesque dimensions? I'd like that person's address. Who exactly thought moviegoers were itching to see an actor impersonate Shaggy going through a heartfelt crisis of self-doubt (one of the plot threads in Scooby Doo 2)? As crush-worthy as Linda Cardellini is as the mystery solver Velma, do we need to see her in a leather catsuit? Was it as funny the second time you heard Freddie Prinze Jr. would play vapid Fred, let alone the second time you saw Prinze in a blonde wig?
Yes, Prinze may have found the role he was born to play; Sarah Michelle Gellar may be riffing a slightly sillier vampire slayer; Matthew Lillard has Casey Kasem's late 60s hipster rasp, and Shaggy's slack strut, nailed.
So now what?
Despite a great deal of evidence (Josie and the Pussycats, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, Rocky & Bullwinkle) no one placed that call to Hollywood - despite the spectacularly bad idea of a live-action Garfield, and a live-action Thunderbirds that replaces its puppets with actual actors (both due this summer) - the least-requested trend in recent Hollywood continues.
As does its remarkable result:
Like the first Scooby Doo movie, Scooby Doo 2 (and the live-action Flintstones, Josie, Rocky & Bullwinkle movies) manages to be even more disposable than the cartoon its based on. And I even liked this new one slightly more than the first. Seth Green makes a nice mystery man. The cast is fun. Director Raja Gosnell, not so worried about making a hipper take of the TV show, beats us less over the head. You don't sense the pressure to establish a Warner Bros. franchise equally accommodating to Gen Xers, parents, and their children. The kids have won this round. Which would be heartening, too, if only I were more sure they'd remember a thing about Scooby Doo 2 by next Saturday morning.
First Published March 26, 2004, 12:01 p.m.